Discover who is Julien Rey
- 14/06/2021
Julien Rey says it himself: he trained “self-taught, integrating and taking inspiration from various cultures, through [his] discoveries”. A great traveler, the French artist developed work that was heavily influenced by Asian culture. Marked by the Zen philosophy and with a desire for refinement and simplicity, he produces minimal compositions that appear like suspended moments, poetic breaks in the middle of the surrounding disorder.
His unique and individual technique of working varnish worked with a knife and gold leaf inlays puts light at the heart of his works, as it plays with areas of shadow and brightness, creating slivers of black and gold. His representations of urban landscapes thus confront obscurity and light in contrasted compositions with impressionistic atmospheres. Julien Rey describes his works as “fugitive rays” or “twilight flashes”, as he attempts to capture the changing moments between day and night where light becomes divine and emotions become intense.
Trying to inspire, feel and self-reflect, the artist is not looking for a true duplication of what he sees, but instead wishes to capture and materialize the “aesthetic link between finesse and rigor, movement and perspective, emptiness and fullness”. In the end, his works capture the true heart of reality but remain distanced from that reality.
“Talent means to work a lot and achieve something” Julien Rey
1. Introduce yourself in a few words? What is your background?
2. Your encounter with Carré d’artistes?
3. How did your vocation as an artist come into being?
I never chose to be a painter, in fact I feel that one doesn’t decide to become an artist, others turn you into an artist, the look, criticism, comments…One can only create works to display, do one’s best and in the sincerest way possible. However, I feel that creativity emerges during childhood, it’s something innate and one tends to cultivate it. According to me, one needs to have a child’s soul to be an artist. It’s important to have a fresh look while looking at things, to create one’s own style.
4. How does a painting session take place? What is the creation process for one of your works?
I always paint very early, at three or four in the morning to be at peace and focused, along with music to pace my sessions. My technique based on lacquer and gold foil on wood requires flat work. In the beginning, I lay various layers of black and white lacquer on a wooden frame. I make up the background and the perspective with the help of spatulas, by removing the material. The second step is to add material by creating detailed contours and plan value. The last step, when the layers are properly dry, is to inlay the gold foil with spatulas.
5. What are your artistic inspirations, your influences, and references?
6. How do you relate to the themes highlighted in your paintings?
To be honest, the themes or the subjects of my paintings are not important, it is only a pretext to reach out to people. Besides, I really like it when artists make us "forget" their subject, this way we are totally immersed into the work.
7. What is the meaning behind the colors you use? Do you wish to convey a message?
It's a bit peculiar for me because I can't see colors. Thus, I naturally oriented my research towards compositions which are only in black and white, adding the gold foil, which took place later on, marked my style and has remained the same since then. I turned a "constraint" into a sincere and personal style. Never underestimate the positive effect of a constraint. According to me art is only coercion.
